The killing of George Parkman, philanthropist and physician, in 1849 is one of the most notable murders in American history.
Not only was John White Webster, the man convicted of murdering Parkman, a full professor at what was then (and still may be) America’s premier institution of higher learning — Harvard University — but the case also saw the first formal use of forensic dentistry to solve a crime, and the instructions to Webster’s jury on the subject of reasonable doubt are still heard in American criminal trials more than 150 years after Chief Justice Shaw delivered them.
The case is equally curious because of the murderer’s stature in society. In the 21st century, we are jaded by criminals like the Menendez brothers, who toss away seemingly charmed lives for prison cells, but in the mid-19th century, this was almost unheard of.
“Professor Webster belongs to that order of criminal of which Eugene Aram and the Rev. John Selby Watson are our English examples, men of culture and studious habits who suddenly burst on the astonished gaze of their fellowmen as murderers,” wrote H.B. Irving in his wonderful retrospective of the case included in The Book of Remarkable Criminals (1910). “The exact process of mind by which these hitherto harmless citizens are converted into assassins is to a great extent hidden from us.”
Professor Webster was an instructor of chemistry whose lectures took place on the first floor of what was then the University’s Medical School on North Grove Street in Boston, described by a contemporary writer as “a large and rather dreary red-brick, three-storied building.”
Behind Webster’s lecture hall was the upper laboratory, which contained a private staircase that led to a lower laboratory. Webster used this lower lab, which was separated from the gross anatomy lab and dissection rooms by small hallway that led to the outside via a side door.
“The professor of chemistry, by locking the doors of his lecture-rooms and the lower laboratory could, if he wished, make himself perfectly secure against intrusion and come and go by the side door without attracting much attention,” Irving wrote.
Apparently happily married and a doting father, Webster was the only son of a wealthy apothecary in Boston who graduated from Harvard University and was appointed to a professorship there in large part due to his acquantaince with his victim, George Parkman. He was alternatively described as “well-liked” by one biographer and “self-willed and self-indulgent” by another.
“With a mild, kind and unassuming disposition, with eminently social feelings and manners of uncommon affability, he probably had not any enemy,” The Yarmouth Register wrote about Webster when he went on trial for Parkman’s murder.
His circumstances in 1849 indicate that each of these descriptions was probably accurate.
Webster’s father died in 1833 and left his son an estate of $40,000 (worth approximately $350,000 in 2006), but due to his fondness “of the good things of the table and a good cigar,” by 1849, Webster had gone through the inheritance. Not only did the professor build a costly mansion in Cambridge, but he also enjoyed entertaining and was an avid collector of minerals. This collection would factor largely in his motivation to kill.
“By living consistently beyond his means, he found himself at length entirely dependent on his professional earnings,” Irving wrote. This salary of $800 per year (about $10,000 in 2006), was hardly enough to support him and his family in the manner to which they had become accustomed, and he supplemented his salary by selling tickets to his lectures at the college (The Boston Daily Bee described Webster as “tolerated rather than respected, and has only retained his position on account of its comparative insignificance. As a lecturer he was dull and common-place and while the students took tickets to his lectures, they did not generally attend them.”). This still did not allow him to live the lifestyle he wanted.
By 1842, Webster had begun borrowing from friends to support himself. His first loan came from George Parkman, who lent him about $200, which Webster had paid back some $50 by 1847. However, in 1847 Webster required an additional loan of $1,000 which Parkman and several others provided. Webster offered his extensive mineral collection as collateral for this loan.
A year later, his financial situation became so desperate that he stood in danger of losing his home, and Webster approached Parkman’s brother-in-law, a Mr. Shaw, and received another loan of $500 or so, and again offered the mineral collection as collateral.
This move behind Parkman’s back would result in murder.
Contemporary drawings of Dr. Parkman show a lean, stern-faced man who was quite tall and angular. Despite his hard-looking exterior, George Parkman’s achievements and acts demonstrate that he was a “just and generous man” who accepted no deceit or dishonesty. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who worked beside Parkman as a healer, described his friend as “the perfect Yankee: he abstained while others indulged, he walked while others rode, he worked while others slept.”
Parkman was especially known for his work with the mentally ill, a severely neglected group in any age, but one that was particularly ignored in the mid-19th century. Not only did he put up some of his own money to build an asylum in Massachusetts, during a smallpox outbreak, he opened his home to victims for treatment.
However, when Parkman learned from Shaw that the same mineral collection had been twice mortgaged through Webster’s desperate deceit, his altruism vanished.
“Forbearing and patient as long as he was dealt with fairly, (Parkman) was merciless where he thought he detected trickery or evasion,” Irving wrote. “His forbearance and his patience were utterly exhausted, his anger and indignation strongly aroused, when he learnt from Shaw that Webster had given him as security for his debt a bill of sale on the collection of minerals, already mortgaged to himself. From the moment of the discovery of this act of dishonesty on the part of Webster, Parkman pursued his debtor with unrelenting severity.”
Parkman would appear at Webster’s laboratory while the professor was conducting experiments demanding “satisfaction.” He stopped by Webster’s home seeking repayment of the debt.
Not only did Parkman threaten to sue his old friend, he garnished the fees Webster’s agent collected for his sparsely attended lectures and even attended the lectures himself to pressure the professor into payment of his debt.
“He…sat glaring at him in the front row of seats, while the professor was striving under these somewhat unfavorable conditions to impart instruction to his pupils,” Irving wrote.
It was in November 1849 that the matter came to its grisly conclusion.
On Friday, November 23, 1849, Webster had apparently made up his mind how he would resolve the situation. On later investigation, it was apparent that he had no intention of paying off the doctor. His bank account contained a total of $100, nowhere near what Parkman was demanding.
After having avoided Dr. Parkman for the past several days, Webster went to Parkman’s home and made an appointment with the doctor for 1:30 p.m. at the medical college.
An hour later, Webster met with his agent in his laboratory and was presented with the $50 in receipts from the most recent lectures. The agent told him because of Parkman’s attempt at garnishment, he could no longer represent Webster.
“You will have no further trouble with Dr. Parkman, for I have settled with him,” the agent later recalled Webster as saying.
Parkman was a man of habit and always took his dinner at half-past two. When he did not appear as he had every day of his adult life, his family became concerned and started to make inquiries.
The initial investigation revealed that Dr. Parkman purchased a head of lettuce from a grocer on Bridge Street at about 1:30 p.m. and shortly before 2 p.m., he was seen by a workman heading toward the medical college building.
“The Dr. was seen to enter the Hospital by several individuals, but no person can be found who saw him come out,” reported the Boston Evening Herald shortly after his disappearance. “His person is well known in that vicinity, and it would have been almost an impossibility for him to leave the Hospital at that time of day, without being seen and recognized by some person.”

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